It's a bit like "if six were nine" and "all the mountains fell in the sea"

If incidents could turn into problems then incident managers would be tempted to offload them all the time_________________"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. major incident and problem do not overlap.

Any incident is likely to be indicative of a problem and in many cases it will be worth investigating the problem. The smallest of incidents is capable of being a symptom of the largest of problems and vice versa. There is no logical relationship between the scale of an incident and the complexity of its cause.

A major incident is an incident that your organization deems significant enough in its impact or risks to warrant special management action to ensure it is well managed and resolved as effectively and as quickly as can be achieved. In all other respects it is simply an incident.

The management of problems and incidents has to be completely separate because the objectives are different.

In the case of an incident (however minor or major) the primary objective is to restore service. Cause will be investigated only in so far as it helps in the restoring of service.

A problem is an underlying or looming condition that may cause incidents. It is not necessary for there to already have been any such incidents although that is one of the common ways in which a problem will first manifest itself. The primary objective in dealing with a problem is to prevent or ameliorate these future incidents. Thus the focus is on identifying cause so that something can be done about it.

During the time that an incident is "live", it is unlikely that resources would be diverted from its resolution in order to tackle any underlying causes. As soon as any painful (major) incident has been resolved it is very likely that resources will be devoted to investigating why it happened and developing a means of preventing it from happening again if possible._________________"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. major incident and problem do not overlap.

Any incident is likely to be indicative of a problem and in many cases it will be worth investigating the problem. The smallest of incidents is capable of being a symptom of the largest of problems and vice versa. There is no logical relationship between the scale of an incident and the complexity of its cause.

A major incident is an incident that your organization deems significant enough in its impact or risks to warrant special management action to ensure it is well managed and resolved as effectively and as quickly as can be achieved. In all other respects it is simply an incident.

The management of problems and incidents has to be completely separate because the objectives are different.

In the case of an incident (however minor or major) the primary objective is to restore service. Cause will be investigated only in so far as it helps in the restoring of service.

A problem is an underlying or looming condition that may cause incidents. It is not necessary for there to already have been any such incidents although that is one of the common ways in which a problem will first manifest itself. The primary objective in dealing with a problem is to prevent or ameliorate these future incidents. Thus the focus is on identifying cause so that something can be done about it.

During the time that an incident is "live", it is unlikely that resources would be diverted from its resolution in order to tackle any underlying causes. As soon as any painful (major) incident has been resolved it is very likely that resources will be devoted to investigating why it happened and developing a means of preventing it from happening again if possible.

MY question was when you dtermine if its a major incident or a problem

Sorry. I thought I had answered that question. If it is an incident, then it is an incident no matter how major or minor. It becomes a major incident when it meets your criteria for a major incident, and your criteria will be unlike other people's criteria, possibly in radical ways depending on your organization.

An incident is never a problem - read the definitions.

"There is freqently a Conflict Between Incident Management And Problem Management"
- did you notice that the conflict was stated as between the two management regimes and not the two entities?
- did you follow the link for the explanation?

Basically, if I want to solve a problem, I want everything left just as it is so that I can get the maximum information from it and if I want to resolve an incident, I want to get something fixed as soon as possible. That is the conflict._________________"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

1 - A incident is an incident. It happens when the delivery of a service is not met in accordance with the agreement

1a - A Major incident is when something happens that is felt by a lot of the susers for a customer or a lot of customers and a service

2 - A problem is a problem. It happens when you dont know what caused one or more incidents that have happened (reactive Problem mgmt) or you found something that could cause one or more incidents (proactive Problem mgmt)

So Incident Management wants to restore the service as quickly as possible with any deep investigation into why it happened

Problem Management on the other hand does not care whether the service is being delivered or not. It only cares about find what cause the incident.

This is the inherent conflict between IM and PM. They have different goals.

So when IM sees patterns in incidents, they as part of their process - recommend that PM look at the pattern to determine whether PM wants to investigate

However PM has to determine whether the offered set of incidents does match the critieria for them to work. If so, then PM creates and works on the problem record_________________John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)